Jury Selection in Martin Shkreli Trial Begins With Name Calling

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Martin Shkreli walking into the federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Monday. He denies the charges, which relate to his time running two hedge funds and at Retrophin, a drug company.CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

More than 120 potential jurors in the fraud trial of Martin Shkreli were dismissed Monday, with some calling him “a snake,” “the most hated man in America” and “the face of corporate greed.”

Mr. Shkreli is on trial at the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, charged with eight counts of securities and wire fraud. He denies the charges, which relate to his time running two hedge funds and at Retrophin, a drug company. But he is much better known for instituting steep price increases on lifesaving drugs as a pharmaceutical entrepreneur.

Several potential jurors on Monday blamed Mr. Shkreli broadly for the problems of the pharmaceutical industry. Three, for instance, castigated him for raising the price of the EpiPen. (He did not.)

Others said they had been affected personally by Mr. Shkreli’s price increases. (The potential jurors were not identified by name in court.)

A man said both of his parents took Daraprim, a drug for a rare parasitic infection. Mr. Shkreli raised its price to $750 a pill, from $13.50, overnight in 2015 while running Turing Pharmaceuticals.

“The price has been going up in the last few years, so they can’t afford their drugs,” the prospective juror said of his parents. “They’re struggling to pay” for their daily medical routine.

Further, the man said, he has several friends with H.I.V. or AIDS — people who may use Daraprim for infections — who cannot afford their drugs.

Another man told the judge, Kiyo A. Matsumoto, “This is the price gouger of drugs.” He added: “My kids are on some of these drugs. This impacts my kids.”

One woman mimicked throttling someone as she talked about Mr. Shkreli’s raising the price of “the AIDS drug.”

“Who does that?” she said. “A person that puts profit over everything else?”

When Judge Matsumoto told prospective jurors that Mr. Shkreli’s work in pharmaceuticals was not on trial, the prosecutor Alixandra Smith objected.

“If the defendant takes the stand and testifies,” she said, prosecutors may introduce some of his exploits in the pharmaceutical world, too.

Other potential jurors had bad reactions to Mr. Shkreli himself.

One said she had not known what the trial was about when she walked in and saw Mr. Shkreli. “I looked right at him, and in my head, I said, ‘That’s a snake’ — not knowing who he was,” the woman said.

After the potential juror had stepped down, Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer for Mr. Shkreli, said, “So much for the presumption of innocence.”

The potential jurors were questioned at a sidebar with Judge Matsumoto, defense lawyers, prosecutors and one reporter from a news pool.

The negative comments built up to the point that Mr. Brafman began to signal to Judge Matsumoto when potential jurors had said enough that he could challenge them for cause, to stop them from going “on a tirade against Mr. Shkreli.”

Mr. Brafman said that he and the rest of Mr. Shkreli’s legal team had objected to the reporter’s presence at the sidebar for that reason, among others.

“I’m anticipating an article, a piece, that will further complicate the already complicated job of defending someone so many people feel strongly about,” Mr. Brafman said.

One potential juror told the judge that “you’d have to convince me he was innocent.”

“The defendant is the face of corporate greed in America,” the man said.

Judge Matsumoto said the judicial system started with a presumption of innocence.

“I understand that, but everything I’ve seen,” the man began, before Mr. Brafman signaled by lifting his hand that he was challenging the man for cause.

Only one potential juror seemed to side with Mr. Shkreli: a woman who said her former husband had a medical supply business that dealt with the stock market. “I would never convict him,” she said.

The majority of prospective jurors were dismissed Monday for medical reasons or reasons related to work or vacation plans.

On Tuesday, Judge Matsumoto will bring back about 40 of the potential jurors for further questioning, with as many as 100 more prospective jurors.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Presumed Innocent? Shkreli Is Target of Name Calling at Jury Selection. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe